Grant winners – 3 November 2016

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Research grants

• Award winner: Amanda Coles
• Institution: King’s College London
• Value: £100,748

AI planning with continuous non-linear change

• Award winner: John Collomosse
• Institution: University of Surrey
• Value: £854,808

TAPESTRY: trust, authentication and privacy over a decentralised social registry

• Award winner: Fiona Meldrum
• Institution: University of Leeds
• Value: £457,565

Doped-up: bio-inspired assembly of single crystal nanocomposites

Royal Society

Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships

• Award winner: Kirsti Ashworth
• Institution: Lancaster University
• Value: £307,099

Air quality impacts of land-atmosphere interactions (AQUILA)

• Award winner: Amy Bonsor
• Institution: University of Cambridge
• Value: £437,156

Planetary systems around evolved stars

• Award winner: Emily Findlay
• Institution: University of Edinburgh
• Value: £517,645

Cathelicidin is Critical for Pathogenic T cell development in multiple sclerosis

• Award winner: Sarah White
• Institution: University College London
• Value: £346,401

Exploring heterogeneity in implicit mentalising and its consequences in autism

Economic and Social Research Council

Research grants

• Award winner: Martin Koppensteiner
• Institution: University of Leicester
• Value: £140,102

The impact of dengue fever in early life on human capital formation

• Award winner: Sarah Bell
• Institution: University of Warwick
• Value: £183,610

The role of natural environments within the emotional geographies of visual impairment

• Award winner: Isabelle Dautriche
• Institution: University of Edinburgh
• Value: £162,197

How learning and using words shapes the structure of the lexicon

In detail

Award winner: Jack Blumenau
Institution: London School of Economics
Value: £184,857

Measuring political debate: responsiveness, influence and rhetoric in parliamentary texts

Most parliamentary debates in the UK pass unnoticed by those outside Westminster. This is regrettable, as parliamentary speech-making is a core democratic responsibility of elected politicians. Furthermore, debates provide MPs with the opportunity to scrutinise government policy and to voice the concerns and interests of their constituents. Recently, there has been a great deal of progress in analysing parliamentary debate, particularly into revealing MPs’ underlying ideological preferences, or estimating the priorities they place on certain policy issues. This project aims to move beyond existing research by developing new ways to extract meaning from the speeches made by politicians. New statistical methodologies will be designed for understanding three features of political speech: how responsive ministers are to the questions that are put to them by backbench MPs; which politicians are influential in parliamentary debates; and how MPs use rhetoric to make their speeches more persuasive. The researcher will focus on analysis of debates from Clement Attlee’s 1945 government through to the end of the 2015 legislative session.